SBE-UKRI: Collaborative Research: The Role of Environment in Social Transformation

考古学家对社会崩溃进行了研究，努力解开导致长期政治制度崩溃的多重社会、政治和环境因素。然而，主要问题仍然没有得到回答。跨学科的研究假设，潜在的严重干旱事件可能在这一过程中发挥重要作用。尽管在古气候记录中有很强的模式，但精英和非精英人群如何应对干旱的影响还不太清楚。研究表明，坍塌可能会随着废弃时间的不同而不同，不同的地理区域可能代表着每个地点人口的不同决策过程。在某些情况下，定居点能够在几次干旱中坚持下去，尽管这种生存的机制还不是很清楚。这些问题与当前的气候挑战有关，因为过去的模式可能是成功或失败地适应气候影响的过去社会的经验教训。这一奖项将进一步促进国际合作和对学生的进一步培训。该项目将确定人类对气候挑战的反应，其方式不再是简单的“干旱导致的崩溃”的叙述，以确定在人口面临气候不稳定时采取了什么适应战略。为了了解人类对气候变化的反应，研究人员问：在极端干旱的情况下，人口如何改变他们的土地利用策略？他们是如何在崩溃后继续占领的？他们是否改变了他们的耕作和生活方式？这些问题将通过检查埋葬的数量和时间来解决，以衡量人口规模如何随着时间的推移而变化。将对文物和纪念碑建筑进行评估，以了解人们如何决定在贸易和建筑方面使用他们的资源，以及这些资源如何随着气候压力的变化而变化。将利用湖泊沉积物中的地球化学和微化石(花粉、木炭和藻类遗骸)签名重建环境，这些签名记录了周围环境在沉积时的性质。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Archaeologists have studied societal collapse, working to unravel the multiple social, political, and environmental factors that contributed to the breakdown of long term political systems. Yet, major questions remain unanswered. Interdisciplinary research has postulated that potentially severe drought episodes may play an important role in this process. Despite the strong patterns in the paleoclimate record, it is less clear how elite and non-elite populations responded to the impacts of drought. Research has demonstrated that the collapse can be varied with the timing of abandonment different across geographic regions likely representing distinct decision-making processes of populations for each site. In some cases settlements are able to persist through several droughts although the mechanisms of that survival are not well-understood. These issues are relevant to current climate challenges, as past patterns may serve as lessons from past societies that successfully or unsuccessfully adapted to the impacts of climate. This award will further international collaboration and further training of students.This project will identify the human responses to climatic challenges in a way that moves beyond the simple narrative of 'drought caused collapse' to determine what adaptation strategies were adopted as a population faced climate instability. To get at the human responses to climate variation, the reseachers ask: How did a population change their land use strategies in the event of extreme drought? How did they continue occupation following a collapse? Did they change how they farmed and lived? These questions will be addressed by examining the numbers and timing of burials to gauge how population sizes changed through time. Artifacts and monumental construction will be assessed to understand how people decided to use their resources with respect to trade and construction episodes and how these changed with climate pressures. Environments will be reconstructed using geochemical and microfossil (pollen, charcoal and algal remains) signatures in lake sediments that archive the nature of the surrounding environments at the time they were deposited.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.